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Opinion

The Marion County School Board has decided to put the renewal of a local tax on the primary ballot in August.
So if you’re a snowbird who will leave to go up north this summer, and you’re registered to vote here, make sure you get information about absentee ballots before you leave.
The issue will be decided before you come back.

The debate over removing everything from our culture that can be linked to the Confederacy has reached a new ridiculousness.

In a move designed to avoid controversy, supposedly approved by the subject, announcer Robert Lee was switched off the University of Virginia football game this weekend because of his name, similar to the military leader of the Confederacy. The university is in Charlottesville, site of recent clashes between demonstrators. Instead, he’ll do the ESPN game in Pittsburgh.

Go back in time about 500 years or so and pretend you’re one of Marion County’s native inhabitants.

You get up one morning, and your biggest worry is about getting some food. You don’t worry about traffic or pollution or North Korean bombs.

But suddenly your day changes. It’s getting dark very early, and you stare up at the sky and there is a black circle moving across the sun. You watch mesmerized as the son disappears and you think that this is some sort of omen from the gods.

For years, I’ve been questioning some of the moves made in downtown Ocala. I wondered whether some of them serve the majority of residents in this area.

When I moved here almost 20 years ago (and my folks lived here long before that), the Square was the focal point of downtown. There were some great gatherings and festivals, crowds abounded and the area seemed to flourish.

Gradually, things started to change, not necessarily for the better. Not necessarily in chronological order are:

Last week was a bad one for two major airlines, United and American. Both had incidents that make you realize how arrogant some of the personnel who work for these companies are, and why they need to be reined in. Both raised all sorts of questions.

First, United. Take your favorite and biggest sports facility.Let’s say it seats thousands of people for baseball and basketball, more for the National Football League, or the University of Florida football for about 80,000.

Vacations are a good thing. They give you a break from the routine and let your mind and body get refreshed while you supposedly spend some time doing some activities that you don’t normally get to do.

Vacations are also a bad thing. Why? Because they end.

Last week I spent a few days in the Clearwater-Dunedin area. If you know me at all, you might guess that it had something to do with baseball. And you would be right.

Sometimes you go to cover an event not knowing what to expect. That was me just a couple of weeks ago.

One of our Congressmen, Republican Ted Yoho, was holding a town hall meeting at North Marion Middle School. Many GOP representatives have run into major protests across the country, so I was ready for a big afternoon.

It didn’t happen.

Except for a couple of people in the audience who felt they had to interject loud comments over other people, the crowd was a bit tame.

It’s a heck of a way to spend a holiday weekend, yet that’s what I did … reading the attorneys’ report on the conclusion into the investigation of Ocala Police Chief Greg Graham, all 35 pages of it.

While clearing Graham of harassment charges, thereby allowing for his reinstatement, it contains descriptions of some other activities that are not what we should expect of our city employees, whether or not they are police officers.

Saturday morning dawned beautifully clear but a little cool. So I grabbed my jacket, which I hadn’t worn since last winter, and headed out to the Fine Arts Festival of Ocala, better known as FAFO.
I took my cell phone and put it into the inside security pocket of the jacket, you know, the one you have so pickpockets can’t get to you.

In the old days of television, there was the “Perry Como Show,” which featured a segment where the introduction went like this:
“Letters, we get letters, we get stacks and stacks of letters. Dear Perry, would you be so kind, to fill a request and sing a song we like best?”
We may have to adopt that as our theme song. We get lots of letters, many of which are nasty containing personal insults, etc. of politicians.

Last week the Florida Department of Transportation held a public hearing concerning the proposed widening of State Road 200 from County Road 484 to the Withlacoochee Bridge, which is at the county line with Citrus County.

We try to remember those who died in wartime. We mark the historic days and the anniversaries. We fly the flag, we hold parades, we visit the cemeteries, we report on the observances through TV and print. Television and movie makers even try to re-create the feeling of what it was like to fight.

It was Saturday, the second of two brutal news days in which we saw a sheriff suspended, a new one appointed, and two sheriff’s officials put on paid leave.
I had spent much of the day working on the story you see on the front page that was first posted on our website. When it got to be 4 o’clock, I collapsed into my recliner and turned on the Mets game.